Nearly half of California teachers who were surveyed plan to retire or quit in the next 10 years. Nationwide, an estimated 35% of teachers plan to leave the profession in the next decade, Kurtz said.
The findings are similar to a survey released in January by the California Teachers Association. It found that while a majority of teachers are satisfied with their job, 40% are considering leaving education within the next few years — nearly half for financial reasons.
Teacher morale is increasingly important as states continue to struggle with teacher shortages, especially in hard-to-fill jobs like special education, science, technology, math, engineering and bilingual education.
Teachers listed improved student behavior as the second most important factor for improving teacher morale. Three-quarters of elementary school teachers, 61% of middle school teachers and 54% of high school teachers surveyed said student behavior is getting worse.
Discipline problems were the result of a perfect storm of factors that worsened when students lost socialization during the pandemic and when schools shifted to restorative justice models of discipline that weren’t always communicated well to teachers or implemented with the necessary resources, Kurtz said.
More than half of the teachers who took the survey said improving student behavior would boost their morale. They called for restrictions on students’ use of cellphones and other personal devices, tougher consequences for students who misbehave, limits on parents’ ability to undermine those consequences and instruction for parents on teaching their children to behave in school.
Have we considered paying people in these positions a reasonable, competitive wage?
Teacher morale is increasingly important as states continue to struggle with teacher shortages, especially in hard-to-fill jobs like special education, science, technology, math, engineering and bilingual education.
Have we considered paying people in these positions a reasonable, competitive wage?
While it makes sense to vary salaries depending on specialization, there's going to be serious pushback on paying STEM teachers enough to compete with industry salaries. Universities have these...
While it makes sense to vary salaries depending on specialization, there's going to be serious pushback on paying STEM teachers enough to compete with industry salaries. Universities have these same struggles with STEM departments requiring higher wages to retain talented professors.
That depends on what you're considering the "industry". Most teachers have education degrees or dual majors in an area + education and aren't trained to go into those high paying stem jobs. Some...
That depends on what you're considering the "industry". Most teachers have education degrees or dual majors in an area + education and aren't trained to go into those high paying stem jobs. Some may have worked and gotten a teaching certificate later but most are teachers by education. Paying them based on those external career fields will absolutely screw over some of the most important teachers - elementary, early childhood and special education teachers.
Professors in contrast have advanced degrees in their field of study and often zero education on teaching others. It's a very different subset of people.
But there will be, and is, plenty of pushback on paying teachers regardless of the field so no worries, either way we aren't doing it
For STEM, I think it's more common to double major or get a minor in education (varies a ton). If someone has a bachelor's degree in an engineering related field, they'd be turning down big money...
Most teachers have education degrees or dual majors in an area + education and aren't trained to go into those high paying stem jobs.
For STEM, I think it's more common to double major or get a minor in education (varies a ton). If someone has a bachelor's degree in an engineering related field, they'd be turning down big money to stay in education. I have friends that have converted from education to industry because of this.
I've only really seen math education majors and some general science so I'm not sure what "stem" really means here, again, as it's not typically physicists. Double majoring is fairly common here...
I've only really seen math education majors and some general science so I'm not sure what "stem" really means here, again, as it's not typically physicists. Double majoring is fairly common here but minoring in education is only for a specialty, not an option to add on to non-education degrees.
I'm not up on the current reqs for teaching in IL, at least not beyond substitute, but a quick search suggests if you don't do the student teaching you're not generally getting the licensure. Alternative licensure is an option but requires a 2 year "intensive" program.
So ymmv but IME it's not common at the K-12 level to be competing with industry in the sense of having to compete with salaries, they want teachers. It also makes sense for teachers who dislike the field to take their dual degrees or experience and go elsewhere. That is probably going to happen regardless of pay.
Teaching is a career path - you want people who are trained in it and good at it. People whose skills lie in research or in doing the work are useful in college but still sometimes are very bad educators. It was great in grad school to have people who were licensed therapists - it's another field where going on to a further degree, a PhD in counselor education, is not useful without experience. But I don't think you want, for example, me teaching. I'm good at my work, I don't know how to teach.
There's a lot more than pay if education wants to compete with industry. Districts could be more flexible to get working professionals to pick up a part time gig teaching. Universities do this,...
There's a lot more than pay if education wants to compete with industry. Districts could be more flexible to get working professionals to pick up a part time gig teaching. Universities do this, but it seems rare for K-12 education.
This is a "freebie" that doesn't even involve raising taxes, why isn't more discussion being focused on this? Taking away cell phones sounds like an obvious and not controversial first step? Or is...
More than half of the teachers who took the survey said improving student behavior would boost their morale. They called for restrictions on students’ use of cellphones and other personal devices, tougher consequences for students who misbehave, limits on parents’ ability to undermine those consequences and instruction for parents on teaching their children to behave in school.
This is a "freebie" that doesn't even involve raising taxes, why isn't more discussion being focused on this? Taking away cell phones sounds like an obvious and not controversial first step? Or is personal freedom that much of a point of contention?
Researchers did not find a correlation between salary and morale, Kurtz said.
It's been coming, school district by school district; Illinois has a number that have banned them in some capacity or entirely I do still think there's going to be some blowback when the first...
It's been coming, school district by school district; Illinois has a number that have banned them in some capacity or entirely
I do still think there's going to be some blowback when the first school shooting where phones are banned occurs (but it's far sadder that I can say "when") but at least here it's being discussed and acted on.
There's probably no (available) amount of pay that makes up for shitty work environments. People who are doing work they love and being appreciated for it are pretty intrinsically motivated for it.
One uncharitable interpretation of this is simply that all teachers have very low morale, regardless of salary, either because the top end of the payscale is too low for the salary to have any...
Researchers did not find a correlation between salary and morale, Kurtz said.
This is a surprise.
One uncharitable interpretation of this is simply that all teachers have very low morale, regardless of salary, either because the top end of the payscale is too low for the salary to have any effect on morale, or because everything is so terrible that no amount of money can make up for it.
With how infamous the low salary is, many people who get into teaching do so because of passion, not a high paycheck. I considered becoming a teacher myself because my high school made me so...
With how infamous the low salary is, many people who get into teaching do so because of passion, not a high paycheck. I considered becoming a teacher myself because my high school made me so passionate about the importance of education, and I wanted to specifically work at that school in some capacity. I've also heard many tales of people leaving more lucrative jobs for teaching because they found the work more fulfilling.
Basically, teaching is one of the few fields where people are (largely) motivated by morale more than money. The job's conditions can vary wildly each year with each batch of students sometimes one or two really bad years can lead to someone quitting. So the fact so many teachers are simultaneously this low in morale is a REALLY bad sign about the current state of education. And possibly society as a whole, since they're the ones who deal directly with the next generations the most.
I would caution anyone from going into a profession that relies on people being passionate about their work, particularly for education and other public benefit jobs. On an individual level it's...
I would caution anyone from going into a profession that relies on people being passionate about their work, particularly for education and other public benefit jobs. On an individual level it's great! I've personally been on the receiving end of excellent, joyful teachers; but collectively it becomes tempting for higher ups to exploit that passion and not provide a quality learning environment, good pay, and supporting educators in the face of unreasonable criticism.
I dont really understand why this needs to be an external action. Are teachers not allowed to ban cellphones? Is there a law or school ordinance that prevents them from doing so?
I dont really understand why this needs to be an external action. Are teachers not allowed to ban cellphones? Is there a law or school ordinance that prevents them from doing so?
Individual teachers can ban cellphones, but it’s largely ineffective. If it’s happening on a per-class basis, that means the students will already have their phones on them to use in classes where...
Individual teachers can ban cellphones, but it’s largely ineffective.
If it’s happening on a per-class basis, that means the students will already have their phones on them to use in classes where they’re not banned (as opposed to in their lockers, or a Yonder pouch or whatnot). This makes being on it a much more immediate need for the students (consider how it would feel to be in class and get a whole bunch of notifications all at once).
It also fundamentally puts the teacher in an adversarial role regarding cellphones, and they’ll have to spend a non-negligible amount of capital with the students to overcome that. Students are far more likely to see that that teacher in particular as a problem for banning phones, because plenty of other teachers don’t. Whereas if it’s consistent policy across settings, no one teacher has the burden of having to be the stick in the mud for not allowing phones (nor can a teacher gain easy but counterproductive goodwill for letting kids go on their phones).
It also puts a significant enforcement burden on the teacher. Teachers want to be seen as helpful and supportive of kids, not wardens constantly tamping down on “bad” behaviors. Kids want the same thing, but an inconsistent policy on something as high-leverage and omnipresent as phones will create an atmosphere that pushes everyone towards the latter.
Even if a teacher decides to roll with all of this though and still ban phones (which many have done, myself included), it’ll still likely be ineffective unless they’re directly supported by their administrators. Some students WILL use their phones anyway despite a ban, which means that eventually repeat instances will get piped into the schoolwide discipline system. If the administrators aren’t willing to discipline kids for phone violations in that class, then the kids will learn that they don’t have to follow the rule anyway. This once again compromises a big part of the teacher-student relationship and undermines any part of the educational benefit that the phone ban was intended to help with in the first place (and then some).
Setting school or district-wide policies is a way of making the policy itself, rather than individual teachers, be the “enemy” for the students (who of course would like to be on their phones all day, even if it isn’t healthy for their education or development). This goes a long way in helping to establish a better baseline for teacher-student relationships as well as learning in general. We know phones are distracting and apps and platforms are using every psychological trick to get kids’ attention, so if we half-step on measures to address this, we’re essentially ceding ground to those forces instead of helping kids break free from them.
Really interesting take in terms of the "capital" you mentioned teachers having and having to expend. I hadn't thought about the teacher-student relationship like that, but it's a very useful way...
Really interesting take in terms of the "capital" you mentioned teachers having and having to expend. I hadn't thought about the teacher-student relationship like that, but it's a very useful way of analysing that, I think.
Hypothetically, what happens if the teacher deducts 1% of final grade per infraction of cell phone use during class? Parents get angry their kid was failed, admins don't back the teacher?
Hypothetically, what happens if the teacher deducts 1% of final grade per infraction of cell phone use during class?
Parents get angry their kid was failed, admins don't back the teacher?
Admin hardly backs the teacher when they try to fail students or remove disruptive children. There's no way in hell they'd support a squishy grading policy like that.
Admin hardly backs the teacher when they try to fail students or remove disruptive children. There's no way in hell they'd support a squishy grading policy like that.
There’s been a big shift towards making grades solely indicative of mastery of standards, meaning that explicitly including things like conduct and participation in a student’s grade for a class...
There’s been a big shift towards making grades solely indicative of mastery of standards, meaning that explicitly including things like conduct and participation in a student’s grade for a class is considered bad form.
It is unlikely that grading in that manner would be supported, and the teacher would likely be asked to change their policy.
(This is to say nothing of widespread grade inflation and social promotion which would make a possible failing grade relatively meaningless to the student anyway.)
The more I grow the more I understand how useless any single grading system is in an educational context. Mastery is something that's difficult to truely grasp, but traditional grades don't do it...
The more I grow the more I understand how useless any single grading system is in an educational context. Mastery is something that's difficult to truely grasp, but traditional grades don't do it particularly well. A student with excellent mastery might skip out on homework because they feel it's a waste of their time, but they'll get a lower grade because of it.
Grades based soley on mastery are a somewhat good idea, but to embrace them is to abandon an important function of schooling - teaching children how to become good adults. Making sure that they have good social skills as well as the most basic soft skills, like being able to pay attention to someone and follow their directions, or how to have a respectful debate. Those are all things that are lumped into "behavior".
In an ideal world, grades would be an in-depth multivariate evaluation of a student but with classes having a minimum of 30 students and teachers teaching 5+ classes per semester and being stretched out by varioius other factors, It's not exactliy the easiest thing to implement.
The article talks about student behavior and parents undermining teachers' decisions. Without the backing of the school board, teachers are pretty powerless against parents and students.
The article talks about student behavior and parents undermining teachers' decisions. Without the backing of the school board, teachers are pretty powerless against parents and students.
It’s a liability thing. You ban phones. The kids show up with them anyways. What do you do? If you take them and the kids claim damage in any way, congrats, the school is more in a screaming match...
It’s a liability thing. You ban phones. The kids show up with them anyways. What do you do?
If you take them and the kids claim damage in any way, congrats, the school is more in a screaming match with a parent over a potentially $1000 device.
If you tell them to just put it away, well that’s the current status quo and it’s not really working due to the rest of the paragraph (toothless teachers because admin sides with parents)
We cannot take and keep phones. Legally, they have to be returned to the student since they are personal property. Also it’s unlikely that a student who chooses not to follow the directive about...
We cannot take and keep phones. Legally, they have to be returned to the student since they are personal property.
Also it’s unlikely that a student who chooses not to follow the directive about phones in class would then comply with a directive to hand over their phone.
This popped back up in my feed so I went hunting to look at that salary quote, because... well, I just frankly do NOT believe it in the slightest. Here's the next paragraph added: I think this...
This popped back up in my feed so I went hunting to look at that salary quote, because... well, I just frankly do NOT believe it in the slightest.
Here's the next paragraph added:
Researchers did not find a correlation between salary and morale, Kurtz said.
“One thing we did find a correlation with is whether or not you think your salary is better or worse than the salary of the people you’re close to,” Kurtz said. “People who felt like their salary was better or the same as their family or friends tended to have higher morale.”
I think this says to me it's an issue with sample size and/or question given. I just do not believe teachers are paid enough across the US. I don't even think they're paid enough in Canada! And the gold standard countries for quality of education pretty much uniformly do the same 3 things: 1) get higher trained teachers, almost all with Master's; 2) PAY THEM APPROPRIATELY; 3) reduce class sizes where possible.
Tangential: at work, HR presented us with some research that says workers don't care about being paid more they want to feel appreciated so let's all say nice things instead of paying them. I...
Tangential: at work, HR presented us with some research that says workers don't care about being paid more they want to feel appreciated so let's all say nice things instead of paying them. I tracked it down, the "research" is from a firm that sells work place platitudes app.
Makes me wonder how the survey was worded to come to this wild conclusion.
I mean to some extend it is true that they just want to feel appreciated. And the best way to show employees they are appreciated is by paying them more.
I mean to some extend it is true that they just want to feel appreciated. And the best way to show employees they are appreciated is by paying them more.
I see these suggestions all the time, and while I don't necessarily disagree with them, I don't think they would make that much of a difference. I used to work in early childhood education, so I...
And the gold standard countries for quality of education pretty much uniformly do the same 3 things: 1) get higher trained teachers, almost all with Master's; 2) PAY THEM APPROPRIATELY; 3) reduce class sizes where possible.
I see these suggestions all the time, and while I don't necessarily disagree with them, I don't think they would make that much of a difference. I used to work in early childhood education, so I got sort of a sneak peek at the shitshow that CA K-12 educators deal with. In my opinion, any conversation about fixing the education system needs to include guaranteed maternity/paternity leave.
The hot phrase in a lot of educator circles these days is the Finnish model, but an underrated reason as to why it is so successful is because kids in Finland are able to start their first day of school with a much stronger foundation that began at home. The vast majority of my students that struggled would've benefited tremendously if one or more of their parents were able to bond with them more during their infancy/early childhood.
The average teacher salary in California is ~101,000 usd/yr. The median is something like 98,000. Nobody's getting rich teaching, obviously, but I think that's a pretty reasonable wage all things...
The average teacher salary in California is ~101,000 usd/yr. The median is something like 98,000. Nobody's getting rich teaching, obviously, but I think that's a pretty reasonable wage all things considered.
get higher trained teachers, almost all with Master's; 2) PAY THEM APPROPRIATELY; 3) reduce class sizes where possible.
The trouble is that these things are all basically in opposition. If you require teachers to all have masters, you're narrowing the pool, which makes employing more of them to reduce class sizes doubly difficult.
Edit: personally I come down on the "straighten out the schools" side of things. I think teachers' lives would be improved more with competent administrations that maintained discipline than with any sort of politically tenable raise. There are ~4 million teachers in the US, so even a $5,000 raise would add 20 billion to the annual budget just like that. (My understanding is education in the US is mostly state-based so it wouldn't really work like that, but for the purposes of illustration.)
I don't think they all need Master's degrees but being able to get one and move up the pay scale - and be a mentor/guide to new teachers - is key to teachers continuing to learn, improve and not...
I don't think they all need Master's degrees but being able to get one and move up the pay scale - and be a mentor/guide to new teachers - is key to teachers continuing to learn, improve and not stagnate. Not everyone will want an advanced degree (and per the people in the field and teaching it, it's better to work a few years and then get a master's because that experience is incredibly valuable. )
But you do have to hire more teachers and pay them more to keep them.
Oh, for sure, I'm not opposed to master's degrees. I just don't think requiring everyone to have one is a workable policy. I think that part of the system works pretty well all things considered.
Oh, for sure, I'm not opposed to master's degrees. I just don't think requiring everyone to have one is a workable policy. I think that part of the system works pretty well all things considered.
Oh I know I understood what you were saying. A lot of my Ras that I work with are education majors so I get to hear quite a bit. We joked about trying to recruit them for being hall coordinators,...
Oh I know I understood what you were saying. A lot of my Ras that I work with are education majors so I get to hear quite a bit. We joked about trying to recruit them for being hall coordinators, but a lot of them have scholarships or loan forgiveness programs that require them to teach in the state for a certain amount of time or sometimes specifically in underserved communities. Which can be Chicago as much as it could be a rural area.
It's different in different fields and there may be something I don't know about, but mostly with education majors, it's not recommended to go straight onto a master's program in part because it makes you harder to hire to be fair, but also because you need some real world experience.
Apologies, your comment was just the most recent jumping off point for me to reply
I bet there’s also a correlation with how well funded the school itself is. I imagine a salary one teacher was happy with wouldn’t be enough for one who felt obligated to buy classroom supplies...
I bet there’s also a correlation with how well funded the school itself is. I imagine a salary one teacher was happy with wouldn’t be enough for one who felt obligated to buy classroom supplies out of pocket.
Teachers deserve higher pay and more respect than they get. The low salaries are genuinely mind-boggling given how much time and effort it consumes, being a teacher genuinely becomes a part of...
Teachers deserve higher pay and more respect than they get. The low salaries are genuinely mind-boggling given how much time and effort it consumes, being a teacher genuinely becomes a part of your identity. Given how infamous the low salary for teachers is, I think teaching is one of the few fields that's sustained by workers being genuinely passionate about the field in some way, or at least when they first start. I can't think of any other careers off the top of my head where people sign up with intentions of hopefully working in this field for the rest of their lives with no expectations of a high salary.
And I think that just really goes to show just how bad the situation really is for so many teachers to be thinking of quitting.
Maybe it's more about where my mind is at recently, but I saw a stat about educators being laid off because of budget shortfalls. I see this as another data point that the US public education...
Maybe it's more about where my mind is at recently, but I saw a stat about educators being laid off because of budget shortfalls. I see this as another data point that the US public education systems, which as been undermined for decades, is crumbling. Between low pay, increasingly precarious job security, budgets being taken for private/charter/religoius schools, education being used as a work training mechanism instead of developing future citizens its hard to not see this as a logical choice by those with options.
I don't think the US has actually valued an informed citizenry (at least in my lifetime) and has treated degrees like gatekeeping merit badges. The teachers I know are hardworking and sacrifice a ton for the job, but at a certain point the job requires too much sacrifice to be a logical choice.
I have a friend on the other side: he's an accountant for a large, major public school district that's also notorious for bad academic outcomes and budget shortfalls/mismanagement. Very liberal...
I have a friend on the other side: he's an accountant for a large, major public school district that's also notorious for bad academic outcomes and budget shortfalls/mismanagement. Very liberal guy, but even he thinks the school district is basically a giant daycare for kids whose parents won't lift a finger to get involved in their kids' educations but will go to the ends of the earth to defend their misbehavior.
Anyway, he's getting out to become a therapist. He tells me the school district is mismanaged: bad organizational culture, no culture of professional responsibility, lack of fiscal discipline (he recently had to try to stop someone from trying to take funds from payroll), etc.
In his view, the problem starts with school boards: elections are local, uncompetitive, and not highly scrutinized, so aspiring newbie politicians look to get their start there. And then the problems flow downwards from there.
A big reform would be to move control of public schools from the local to state level, where a state-level election of a state school board would probably yield higher-quality candidates or the governor appoints a state head of education.
My wife is a teacher in Canada and she's feeling extra burnt out this year as well. I think the problem is so multi-faceted and systemic it's hard to see any quick solutions. Off the top of my...
My wife is a teacher in Canada and she's feeling extra burnt out this year as well.
I think the problem is so multi-faceted and systemic it's hard to see any quick solutions. Off the top of my head:
We're still working through the COVID disruption to a lot of students learning/socialization and will be for quite a while.
Kids today seemingly spend a lot less time reading/doing any homework at all and the expectation is that learning fits 100% into the school day and is the onus of the teacher
some/many parents today have a more antagonistic relationship with teachers, they expect more from teachers, less from their own kids, nothing from themselves
teachers are expected to do more with less; focuses on inclusion are good with adequate support but without it are actively harmful
I can co-sign on each and every one of these. Let your wife know she is not alone. The second point in particular is a doozy. The primary stakeholders of education have shifted from the students...
I can co-sign on each and every one of these. Let your wife know she is not alone.
The second point in particular is a doozy. The primary stakeholders of education have shifted from the students themselves to their teachers. It’s to the point where many kids do not care at all about failing, but the teacher is genuinely worried, because the responsibility for that will fall on the teacher and not the student. This is completely upside down.
Also the third point is incisive and extremely well-worded. I’ve never seen it summarized before so clearly. I can’t tell you how many meetings I’ve been in where parents expect me to go far above and beyond my duties, essentially expecting me to be a personal private tutor for their child as well as the parents’ own personal secretary, all while not meeting the bare minimum themselves (e.g. not even bothering to checking their student’s grades in our online portal).
The worst part is that I end up looking like the bad guy for maintaining reasonable boundaries, because all anyone ever has to do is pull the “you’re refusing to help a child!” card to make me look like the jerk in the situation. I have to maintain professionalism when faced with this accusation, but parents can say and do whatever they like and don’t hold themselves to even close to the same standard.
It’s genuinely sad that the same pattern is happening across countries.
Yea it's a really hard job (especially to do well) that is not reflected by the pay and unfortunately it's getting harder. I forgot to mention a few more: kids' minds and learning/retention/focus...
Yea it's a really hard job (especially to do well) that is not reflected by the pay and unfortunately it's getting harder. I forgot to mention a few more:
kids' minds and learning/retention/focus have changed in the digital era
If you teach higher grade levels you are now dealing with AI and desperately trying to teach kids to not outsource their critical thinking
Keeping up with email/Teams/Slack/etc. in a job where you often don't have time to go to the bathroom in a given day
I have to maintain professionalism when faced with this accusation, but parents can say and do whatever they like and don’t hold themselves to even close to the same standard.
Yes I hear about this all the time as well. (You thought teaching was hard, have you tried being a teacher's partner! Excuse me while I play my small violin ;D )
Teaching seems very hard right now. Last week I chaperoned my oldest kids class on a field trip. There's a "friend" my child has, who isn't really a friend, but has glommed on to my kid, so I...
Teaching seems very hard right now.
Last week I chaperoned my oldest kids class on a field trip. There's a "friend" my child has, who isn't really a friend, but has glommed on to my kid, so I ended-up watching him along with my kid. And man, I don't think he's a bad kid, but he clearly lacks for attention and discipline at home, acting out pretty aggressively at school. I could just see my kid's teacher's exasperation with this particular child and I know he's not the only one like this that she has in her class of 22.
I don't know how she does it, other than being young and having the energy to deal with these kids.
A deeper look at what teacher attrition data says about Charlotte area school districts I thought this was a good companion article. It’s focused on North Carolina, not California, but teacher...
Teacher attrition — a measurement of teachers who leave North Carolina public schools entirely — ticked up from 9.88% to 10.11%, but state officials said this fraction-of-a-percentage-point increase was not large enough to be meaningful.
So, about that 10.11% attrition rate. That number alone doesn’t tell the whole story.
First, that number’s a statewide average — and it masks a lot of variability.
“Individual districts’ experience with this measure will vary greatly. Many of our districts have very low attrition, many have very high attrition,” Tomberlin said.
If you look at the workbook for this data, you can see that school districts' attrition rates vary from 4.3% to 26.5%. That range is even greater when you include teachers who leave one school district to go to another North Carolina school district — a measure that doesn’t say much about teachers leaving the profession, but that highlights the challenges individual school districts might be facing in terms of retaining teachers. By that measure, attrition rates vary from 6.5% to 40.8%.
I thought this was a good companion article.
It’s focused on North Carolina, not California, but teacher retention is a nationwide issue so it’s still relevant.
I'm not too surprised by this, having gone to high school in California myself along with my younger siblings a few years after me. Even within that short period, a lot of great teachers that were...
I'm not too surprised by this, having gone to high school in California myself along with my younger siblings a few years after me. Even within that short period, a lot of great teachers that were there when I was a student were gone by the time my siblings enrolled, many of them citing the cost of living. This was also pre-COVID so I can imagine things have only gotten worse. While the senior teachers made a decent salary, it certainly wasn't enough for the cost of living in my town. Newer teachers made even less. I don't think any of the teachers I had even lived in my town, many lived 1-2 hours away and would have to commute early in the morning and go back late in the evening. I think only a small handful of teachers in the school lived in our town. One that I remember was the leader of the school district's teachers union and would basically go to war every year to get a salary increase that matched inflation. The other used to work in tech and essentially "retired" to being a school teacher after making his riches.
Have we considered paying people in these positions a reasonable, competitive wage?
While it makes sense to vary salaries depending on specialization, there's going to be serious pushback on paying STEM teachers enough to compete with industry salaries. Universities have these same struggles with STEM departments requiring higher wages to retain talented professors.
That depends on what you're considering the "industry". Most teachers have education degrees or dual majors in an area + education and aren't trained to go into those high paying stem jobs. Some may have worked and gotten a teaching certificate later but most are teachers by education. Paying them based on those external career fields will absolutely screw over some of the most important teachers - elementary, early childhood and special education teachers.
Professors in contrast have advanced degrees in their field of study and often zero education on teaching others. It's a very different subset of people.
But there will be, and is, plenty of pushback on paying teachers regardless of the field so no worries, either way we aren't doing it
For STEM, I think it's more common to double major or get a minor in education (varies a ton). If someone has a bachelor's degree in an engineering related field, they'd be turning down big money to stay in education. I have friends that have converted from education to industry because of this.
I've only really seen math education majors and some general science so I'm not sure what "stem" really means here, again, as it's not typically physicists. Double majoring is fairly common here but minoring in education is only for a specialty, not an option to add on to non-education degrees.
I'm not up on the current reqs for teaching in IL, at least not beyond substitute, but a quick search suggests if you don't do the student teaching you're not generally getting the licensure. Alternative licensure is an option but requires a 2 year "intensive" program.
So ymmv but IME it's not common at the K-12 level to be competing with industry in the sense of having to compete with salaries, they want teachers. It also makes sense for teachers who dislike the field to take their dual degrees or experience and go elsewhere. That is probably going to happen regardless of pay.
Teaching is a career path - you want people who are trained in it and good at it. People whose skills lie in research or in doing the work are useful in college but still sometimes are very bad educators. It was great in grad school to have people who were licensed therapists - it's another field where going on to a further degree, a PhD in counselor education, is not useful without experience. But I don't think you want, for example, me teaching. I'm good at my work, I don't know how to teach.
Then I guess our society is doomed
There's a lot more than pay if education wants to compete with industry. Districts could be more flexible to get working professionals to pick up a part time gig teaching. Universities do this, but it seems rare for K-12 education.
This is a "freebie" that doesn't even involve raising taxes, why isn't more discussion being focused on this? Taking away cell phones sounds like an obvious and not controversial first step? Or is personal freedom that much of a point of contention?
This is a surprise.
It's been coming, school district by school district; Illinois has a number that have banned them in some capacity or entirely
I do still think there's going to be some blowback when the first school shooting where phones are banned occurs (but it's far sadder that I can say "when") but at least here it's being discussed and acted on.
There's probably no (available) amount of pay that makes up for shitty work environments. People who are doing work they love and being appreciated for it are pretty intrinsically motivated for it.
One uncharitable interpretation of this is simply that all teachers have very low morale, regardless of salary, either because the top end of the payscale is too low for the salary to have any effect on morale, or because everything is so terrible that no amount of money can make up for it.
With how infamous the low salary is, many people who get into teaching do so because of passion, not a high paycheck. I considered becoming a teacher myself because my high school made me so passionate about the importance of education, and I wanted to specifically work at that school in some capacity. I've also heard many tales of people leaving more lucrative jobs for teaching because they found the work more fulfilling.
Basically, teaching is one of the few fields where people are (largely) motivated by morale more than money. The job's conditions can vary wildly each year with each batch of students sometimes one or two really bad years can lead to someone quitting. So the fact so many teachers are simultaneously this low in morale is a REALLY bad sign about the current state of education. And possibly society as a whole, since they're the ones who deal directly with the next generations the most.
I would caution anyone from going into a profession that relies on people being passionate about their work, particularly for education and other public benefit jobs. On an individual level it's great! I've personally been on the receiving end of excellent, joyful teachers; but collectively it becomes tempting for higher ups to exploit that passion and not provide a quality learning environment, good pay, and supporting educators in the face of unreasonable criticism.
I wonder if this finding plays out in other industries as well? My grandfather used to say a paycheck was only half the job.
I dont really understand why this needs to be an external action. Are teachers not allowed to ban cellphones? Is there a law or school ordinance that prevents them from doing so?
Individual teachers can ban cellphones, but it’s largely ineffective.
If it’s happening on a per-class basis, that means the students will already have their phones on them to use in classes where they’re not banned (as opposed to in their lockers, or a Yonder pouch or whatnot). This makes being on it a much more immediate need for the students (consider how it would feel to be in class and get a whole bunch of notifications all at once).
It also fundamentally puts the teacher in an adversarial role regarding cellphones, and they’ll have to spend a non-negligible amount of capital with the students to overcome that. Students are far more likely to see that that teacher in particular as a problem for banning phones, because plenty of other teachers don’t. Whereas if it’s consistent policy across settings, no one teacher has the burden of having to be the stick in the mud for not allowing phones (nor can a teacher gain easy but counterproductive goodwill for letting kids go on their phones).
It also puts a significant enforcement burden on the teacher. Teachers want to be seen as helpful and supportive of kids, not wardens constantly tamping down on “bad” behaviors. Kids want the same thing, but an inconsistent policy on something as high-leverage and omnipresent as phones will create an atmosphere that pushes everyone towards the latter.
Even if a teacher decides to roll with all of this though and still ban phones (which many have done, myself included), it’ll still likely be ineffective unless they’re directly supported by their administrators. Some students WILL use their phones anyway despite a ban, which means that eventually repeat instances will get piped into the schoolwide discipline system. If the administrators aren’t willing to discipline kids for phone violations in that class, then the kids will learn that they don’t have to follow the rule anyway. This once again compromises a big part of the teacher-student relationship and undermines any part of the educational benefit that the phone ban was intended to help with in the first place (and then some).
Setting school or district-wide policies is a way of making the policy itself, rather than individual teachers, be the “enemy” for the students (who of course would like to be on their phones all day, even if it isn’t healthy for their education or development). This goes a long way in helping to establish a better baseline for teacher-student relationships as well as learning in general. We know phones are distracting and apps and platforms are using every psychological trick to get kids’ attention, so if we half-step on measures to address this, we’re essentially ceding ground to those forces instead of helping kids break free from them.
Really interesting take in terms of the "capital" you mentioned teachers having and having to expend. I hadn't thought about the teacher-student relationship like that, but it's a very useful way of analysing that, I think.
Hypothetically, what happens if the teacher deducts 1% of final grade per infraction of cell phone use during class?
Parents get angry their kid was failed, admins don't back the teacher?
Admin hardly backs the teacher when they try to fail students or remove disruptive children. There's no way in hell they'd support a squishy grading policy like that.
There’s been a big shift towards making grades solely indicative of mastery of standards, meaning that explicitly including things like conduct and participation in a student’s grade for a class is considered bad form.
It is unlikely that grading in that manner would be supported, and the teacher would likely be asked to change their policy.
(This is to say nothing of widespread grade inflation and social promotion which would make a possible failing grade relatively meaningless to the student anyway.)
The more I grow the more I understand how useless any single grading system is in an educational context. Mastery is something that's difficult to truely grasp, but traditional grades don't do it particularly well. A student with excellent mastery might skip out on homework because they feel it's a waste of their time, but they'll get a lower grade because of it.
Grades based soley on mastery are a somewhat good idea, but to embrace them is to abandon an important function of schooling - teaching children how to become good adults. Making sure that they have good social skills as well as the most basic soft skills, like being able to pay attention to someone and follow their directions, or how to have a respectful debate. Those are all things that are lumped into "behavior".
In an ideal world, grades would be an in-depth multivariate evaluation of a student but with classes having a minimum of 30 students and teachers teaching 5+ classes per semester and being stretched out by varioius other factors, It's not exactliy the easiest thing to implement.
The article talks about student behavior and parents undermining teachers' decisions. Without the backing of the school board, teachers are pretty powerless against parents and students.
It’s a liability thing. You ban phones. The kids show up with them anyways. What do you do?
If you take them and the kids claim damage in any way, congrats, the school is more in a screaming match with a parent over a potentially $1000 device.
If you tell them to just put it away, well that’s the current status quo and it’s not really working due to the rest of the paragraph (toothless teachers because admin sides with parents)
Seems like the best option is still to take the phones and just accept some annual cost to holding them.
The admin that won’t back up teachers isn’t going to be in yearly small claims court suits over supposed damage they may or may not have caused.
Don't go to court. Even readily complying a few times per year will be worth it.
We cannot take and keep phones. Legally, they have to be returned to the student since they are personal property.
Also it’s unlikely that a student who chooses not to follow the directive about phones in class would then comply with a directive to hand over their phone.
The parents are going to court. I have witnessed it. The claim damages far beyond reasonable
This popped back up in my feed so I went hunting to look at that salary quote, because... well, I just frankly do NOT believe it in the slightest.
Here's the next paragraph added:
I think this says to me it's an issue with sample size and/or question given. I just do not believe teachers are paid enough across the US. I don't even think they're paid enough in Canada! And the gold standard countries for quality of education pretty much uniformly do the same 3 things: 1) get higher trained teachers, almost all with Master's; 2) PAY THEM APPROPRIATELY; 3) reduce class sizes where possible.
Tangential: at work, HR presented us with some research that says workers don't care about being paid more they want to feel appreciated so let's all say nice things instead of paying them. I tracked it down, the "research" is from a firm that sells work place platitudes app.
Makes me wonder how the survey was worded to come to this wild conclusion.
I mean to some extend it is true that they just want to feel appreciated. And the best way to show employees they are appreciated is by paying them more.
Oh absolutely I feel most appreciated when I'm paid lol which is why I immediately suspected the "research" saying otherwise
I see these suggestions all the time, and while I don't necessarily disagree with them, I don't think they would make that much of a difference. I used to work in early childhood education, so I got sort of a sneak peek at the shitshow that CA K-12 educators deal with. In my opinion, any conversation about fixing the education system needs to include guaranteed maternity/paternity leave.
The hot phrase in a lot of educator circles these days is the Finnish model, but an underrated reason as to why it is so successful is because kids in Finland are able to start their first day of school with a much stronger foundation that began at home. The vast majority of my students that struggled would've benefited tremendously if one or more of their parents were able to bond with them more during their infancy/early childhood.
The average teacher salary in California is ~101,000 usd/yr. The median is something like 98,000. Nobody's getting rich teaching, obviously, but I think that's a pretty reasonable wage all things considered.
The trouble is that these things are all basically in opposition. If you require teachers to all have masters, you're narrowing the pool, which makes employing more of them to reduce class sizes doubly difficult.
Edit: personally I come down on the "straighten out the schools" side of things. I think teachers' lives would be improved more with competent administrations that maintained discipline than with any sort of politically tenable raise. There are ~4 million teachers in the US, so even a $5,000 raise would add 20 billion to the annual budget just like that. (My understanding is education in the US is mostly state-based so it wouldn't really work like that, but for the purposes of illustration.)
I don't think they all need Master's degrees but being able to get one and move up the pay scale - and be a mentor/guide to new teachers - is key to teachers continuing to learn, improve and not stagnate. Not everyone will want an advanced degree (and per the people in the field and teaching it, it's better to work a few years and then get a master's because that experience is incredibly valuable. )
But you do have to hire more teachers and pay them more to keep them.
Oh, for sure, I'm not opposed to master's degrees. I just don't think requiring everyone to have one is a workable policy. I think that part of the system works pretty well all things considered.
Oh I know I understood what you were saying. A lot of my Ras that I work with are education majors so I get to hear quite a bit. We joked about trying to recruit them for being hall coordinators, but a lot of them have scholarships or loan forgiveness programs that require them to teach in the state for a certain amount of time or sometimes specifically in underserved communities. Which can be Chicago as much as it could be a rural area.
It's different in different fields and there may be something I don't know about, but mostly with education majors, it's not recommended to go straight onto a master's program in part because it makes you harder to hire to be fair, but also because you need some real world experience.
Apologies, your comment was just the most recent jumping off point for me to reply
I bet there’s also a correlation with how well funded the school itself is. I imagine a salary one teacher was happy with wouldn’t be enough for one who felt obligated to buy classroom supplies out of pocket.
Teachers deserve higher pay and more respect than they get. The low salaries are genuinely mind-boggling given how much time and effort it consumes, being a teacher genuinely becomes a part of your identity. Given how infamous the low salary for teachers is, I think teaching is one of the few fields that's sustained by workers being genuinely passionate about the field in some way, or at least when they first start. I can't think of any other careers off the top of my head where people sign up with intentions of hopefully working in this field for the rest of their lives with no expectations of a high salary.
And I think that just really goes to show just how bad the situation really is for so many teachers to be thinking of quitting.
Maybe it's more about where my mind is at recently, but I saw a stat about educators being laid off because of budget shortfalls. I see this as another data point that the US public education systems, which as been undermined for decades, is crumbling. Between low pay, increasingly precarious job security, budgets being taken for private/charter/religoius schools, education being used as a work training mechanism instead of developing future citizens its hard to not see this as a logical choice by those with options.
I don't think the US has actually valued an informed citizenry (at least in my lifetime) and has treated degrees like gatekeeping merit badges. The teachers I know are hardworking and sacrifice a ton for the job, but at a certain point the job requires too much sacrifice to be a logical choice.
I have a friend on the other side: he's an accountant for a large, major public school district that's also notorious for bad academic outcomes and budget shortfalls/mismanagement. Very liberal guy, but even he thinks the school district is basically a giant daycare for kids whose parents won't lift a finger to get involved in their kids' educations but will go to the ends of the earth to defend their misbehavior.
Anyway, he's getting out to become a therapist. He tells me the school district is mismanaged: bad organizational culture, no culture of professional responsibility, lack of fiscal discipline (he recently had to try to stop someone from trying to take funds from payroll), etc.
In his view, the problem starts with school boards: elections are local, uncompetitive, and not highly scrutinized, so aspiring newbie politicians look to get their start there. And then the problems flow downwards from there.
A big reform would be to move control of public schools from the local to state level, where a state-level election of a state school board would probably yield higher-quality candidates or the governor appoints a state head of education.
My wife is a teacher in Canada and she's feeling extra burnt out this year as well.
I think the problem is so multi-faceted and systemic it's hard to see any quick solutions. Off the top of my head:
Just my $0.02
I can co-sign on each and every one of these. Let your wife know she is not alone.
The second point in particular is a doozy. The primary stakeholders of education have shifted from the students themselves to their teachers. It’s to the point where many kids do not care at all about failing, but the teacher is genuinely worried, because the responsibility for that will fall on the teacher and not the student. This is completely upside down.
Also the third point is incisive and extremely well-worded. I’ve never seen it summarized before so clearly. I can’t tell you how many meetings I’ve been in where parents expect me to go far above and beyond my duties, essentially expecting me to be a personal private tutor for their child as well as the parents’ own personal secretary, all while not meeting the bare minimum themselves (e.g. not even bothering to checking their student’s grades in our online portal).
The worst part is that I end up looking like the bad guy for maintaining reasonable boundaries, because all anyone ever has to do is pull the “you’re refusing to help a child!” card to make me look like the jerk in the situation. I have to maintain professionalism when faced with this accusation, but parents can say and do whatever they like and don’t hold themselves to even close to the same standard.
It’s genuinely sad that the same pattern is happening across countries.
Yea it's a really hard job (especially to do well) that is not reflected by the pay and unfortunately it's getting harder. I forgot to mention a few more:
Yes I hear about this all the time as well. (You thought teaching was hard, have you tried being a teacher's partner! Excuse me while I play my small violin ;D )
Funny you should mention that.
I actually have been — and still am! Over 15 years now. 😁
Teaching seems very hard right now.
Last week I chaperoned my oldest kids class on a field trip. There's a "friend" my child has, who isn't really a friend, but has glommed on to my kid, so I ended-up watching him along with my kid. And man, I don't think he's a bad kid, but he clearly lacks for attention and discipline at home, acting out pretty aggressively at school. I could just see my kid's teacher's exasperation with this particular child and I know he's not the only one like this that she has in her class of 22.
I don't know how she does it, other than being young and having the energy to deal with these kids.
A deeper look at what teacher attrition data says about Charlotte area school districts
I thought this was a good companion article.
It’s focused on North Carolina, not California, but teacher retention is a nationwide issue so it’s still relevant.
I'm curious what the higher retention rate districts are doing differently, if anything?
I'm not too surprised by this, having gone to high school in California myself along with my younger siblings a few years after me. Even within that short period, a lot of great teachers that were there when I was a student were gone by the time my siblings enrolled, many of them citing the cost of living. This was also pre-COVID so I can imagine things have only gotten worse. While the senior teachers made a decent salary, it certainly wasn't enough for the cost of living in my town. Newer teachers made even less. I don't think any of the teachers I had even lived in my town, many lived 1-2 hours away and would have to commute early in the morning and go back late in the evening. I think only a small handful of teachers in the school lived in our town. One that I remember was the leader of the school district's teachers union and would basically go to war every year to get a salary increase that matched inflation. The other used to work in tech and essentially "retired" to being a school teacher after making his riches.